This invention relates to the body structure of a passenger car and especially of a convertible.
Conventional body structures of passenger cars and especially of convertibles pose a problem in that in the event of a head-on collision, the front and/or rear section of the body shifts in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle, causing the rearward rim of at least one side door to strike the pillar next to the door-lock side.
Due to the die-release camber of the stamped sheet-steel parts constituting the door and the pillar, the side door, when striking the lock-side pillar, tends to bend and slide outward without absorbing any impact energy. Especially in the case of a convertible with a rear engine, the weight of that rear engine causes the aft section of the vehicle to shift forward and the side door to slip out as described above.
It is an object of this invention to introduce provisions in the structural configuration of a passenger car, with emphasis on a convertible equipped with a rear engine, that improve the crash-resistance performance of the body structure in the event of a head-on collision.
According to the invention, this object is achieved with the claimed design features. Additional, advantageous enhancements of the invention are defined by dependent claims.
Primary improvements achieved with the invention include bracing of the side door and interpositioning of a buttress assembly between the rearward rim of the side door or doors and the adjoining pillar. The buttress assembly provides effective support in the case of a head-on collision and significantly improves the crash resistance of the vehicle body, since even in a head-on collision the side door remains in its closed position while also transferring impact energy in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle. In a head-on collision of a convertible with a rear engine, the lock-side pillar will transfer the impact energy through the side door into the hinge-side pillar.
After a head-on collision, the side door can still be opened without difficulty. The effectiveness of the buttress assembly and bracing increases with the height at which the buttress assembly and the bracing are installed (large upward lever arm). Both features are preferably positioned next to the ‘equator’ of the passenger car, reliably preventing the side door from popping open in the event of a head-on collision.
The buttress assembly is provided on both the side door and the adjoining lock-side pillar, at a right angle to a vertical plane of the longitudinal vehicle center, with butt plates which face each other at a distance and which in the event of a head-on collision impacting the vehicle body come in contact with one another. The butt plate mounted on the fixed pillar preferably is a separate buffer element that can be attached to the pillar. The buffer element is preferably a tetrahedral forged-steel component, mounted on the pillar with the interpositioning of a seal.
The opposite buffer element on the door is composed of a wedge-shaped compensating element and a partial section of a projecting trough-shaped cover plate. The wedge-shaped compensating element is simply attached to the cover plate by means of a double-sided adhesive strip, constituting a prefabricated easy-to-mount component. That component can be installed through an opening provided in the door and can be clipped onto the rim of the opening. It is also possible to integrate the two buffer elements, in unitized fashion, into the door and the fixed pillar, respectively.
The hollow strut connects at one end to the forward hinge reinforcement and at its other end to the lock reinforcement of the door. The hollow strut consists of a tubular element or of a top-hat-contoured partial channel section of the outer door-well reinforcement capped with a hat-shaped edge plate.